God is My Shepherd

Have you ever felt like you’re holding everything together — and terrified of what happens if you stop? In this episode, Matt Shetler walks through Psalm 23 and discovers it’s not the comfort psalm we think it is. It’s a trust psalm. One that meets us in the valley, calls us by name, and reminds us that we were never meant to be our own shepherd.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Just thinking about this week, and maybe you've been in this situation. Uh, maybe you felt this, and a lot of us don't name these kind of things out loud. Uh, but have you ever been in that situation where you feel like um you're doing a lot of stuff, you're staying busy, but ultimately you're not really sure how well you're doing any of those things. Well, thanks, buddy. Appreciate you. Um like you're just you're keeping it going, you're spinning the plates. Um, like, but and when you're at work, you feel like you're kind of thinking about all the stuff you need to do at your house. Ever been there? When you're at home, you're thinking about the stuff that you need to do at work. You kind of show up to places, but you're not really present because you're kind of getting pulled everywhere. Like you're moving, right? Like you're doing a lot of activity, but it feels more like you're on a treadmill than walking through the Rocky River Reservation. You know, like there, you're like, okay, I'm making some progress, but instead, life just sort of feels like you're walking in the same place, not getting anywhere. Doing everything, your schedule is super full. So if you're someone who's like, I'm busy, I must be getting stuff done, but you take an inventory and you feel like, man, I don't know if I'm doing any of this well. I feel like I'm failing at all the things I'm doing, even if I'm busy. I know I've definitely felt like that at times. I feel like I'm spinning a lot of plates, but none of them are really knocking it out of the park. And underneath it all, I think sometimes, if we're honest, there's this fear. There's this fear, why do we keep the space, the plates spinning? Why do we keep everything going? Is that if I stop, everything falls apart. You ever felt that way? Like if I stop, everything falls apart. Then maybe this thought of like, there's no one else who's gonna pick up this if it falls, right? And even if you're married or have close friends or coworkers, it's not even necessarily always a critique on them, but it just feels like if I don't do this, everything's gonna crumble underneath my feet. That if I don't hold it together, who will? Like everyone else, like, even if your expectation is that anyone else will hold it together, you're like, I've got to be the one who holds it together. And that's what I want to talk to you about this morning. Because I think that feeling, that fear of if I don't hold this together, if I don't keep it going, everything's gonna fall apart. We actually see those feelings in the Bible. We meet people who had similar experiences. And I think about Psalm 23 that we read earlier, and then in this psalm, I think was really written by someone who had been to a place where they'd been in situations where they wrestled with if I don't keep it going, who will? Who's gonna hold all this together? Because there is so much I'm trying to hold together. There's so much that's happening. I don't know if I can do it, and I don't think I can. It's actually too much for me. I think the author himself felt this and wrote Psalm 23 to remind himself of what he believed was true. And that was this idea that God was his shepherd. Which is probably one of the most familiar psalms in the Bible, right? That God is my shepherd, the Lord is my shepherd. You've probably heard it at funerals, right? Maybe uh you've seen it on decorations on a coffee mug. Maybe you memorized it as a kid. It's often read as like a comfort in times of grief. And as much as this psalm does give comfort, I really think it was written primarily as a song of trust. That's psalms are songs, by the way. They're often sung or chanted or read, but it's poetry, it's song. And I think it was written as a song or a prayer of trust. Not as something to comfort us, but as saying this is true, even when I don't feel it. King David, the author of the psalm, I think wrestled through the question of who will actually hold everything together if I won't or can't. Am I really responsible for it all? And he writes this statement as a statement of trust. Not a statement of trust in himself, and not a statement that everything will work out the way that he hopes, either. It was a statement of trust in a person. It was a statement of trust in a person, and not just any person. He begins the psalm with this frames phrase that really changes everything. He says, The Lord is my shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd. That the Lord that's God, that's the the name that they use uh the Lord uh for God, it's not just a shepherd, it's not just a shepherd in general, not it's like generally God is a shepherd. But me specifically, personally, my shepherd, is what David is saying. And what does that mean? If God is his shepherd, it means that he doesn't have to be his own shepherd. He doesn't have to be his own shepherd. And maybe like right now you're like, I don't really know about the shepherd language. I can't see remember the last time I saw a sheep. And we'll talk about what that means. But essentially, meaning I don't have to be the one who holds it all together. I don't have to be the one who always knows the right way to go. I don't have to be the one who always looks out for everybody else. I don't have to always look out for me because there's someone who is. David's saying that God himself was this shepherd. So, what does it mean to have a shepherd or to have God as your shepherd? So let's read Psalm 23. And we just read it earlier, but we'll read through it. I'll read through it again. The Lord is my shepherd, I have all that I need. He lets me rest in green meadows, he leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength, and that word strength is like your whole self. So it's not just like your muscle strength, but like that word is like your whole being, like emotional, physical, all of it. He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name. Even when I walk through the darkest valley, or that word darkest could mean the valley like death. So not just like it's not very bright. But even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honor me by anointing my head with oil, my cup overflows with blessings. Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever. Again, the first thing that I notice is the first part of the psalm. It says, The Lord is my shepherd, is my shepherd. In other words, not generally or remotely, right? Like, man, I don't know, right now, and there's like beauty to social media, there's beauty to like Zoom calls and FaceTime. We can stay connected in some ways to people that we maybe wouldn't be able to talk to at all, right? The problem is that with all our remote work and social media, we have like some level of connection with people. Maybe some people that we've never spent time with. I know some of you work remotely, and you say, Some of my coworkers I've never actually been in the same room with, right? And that doesn't mean you can't get to know them, but there's something about having someone with you, like in the room with you, like right there, not just over FaceTime, not just over a Zoom call, right? For those of you who maybe like met your spouse or your significant other online, you know, like maybe you first started chatting FaceTime, right? But like ultimately you go, I want to meet them in person. Like I want to like get to know them in person. So this, when Jesus, when the psalmist says, the Lord is my shepherd, he's saying, My shepherd, right there, present. You can't be a shepherd remotely. You can't be a shepherd from a distance. You have to be right there. This also means the shepherd is close. He knows, like a real shepherd knows his or her sheep. Shepherds would spend hours, almost the whole day with sheep. It wasn't like something you did remote again remotely. It wasn't something that, like, you know, now like when they're like cattle herding or whatever, you have like drones that are helping you. This is not that. This is not that. These shepherds were always with the sheep. They knew the individual temperaments of the sheep. That's not me making it up as a preacher. It's like the study is like they would know how their sheep would act because they would spend so many hours with the sheep. It's said that even now today, shepherds in the Middle East and other places where they still do sheep herding this way is that if you mix all the sheep together, like from other different herds and different shepherds, that the shepherds can pick out which ones are theirs. Not just because there's some kind of branding mark, but they just know what they look like. Because they spend so much time together. For us, we'd be like, I don't know, they're all fluffy and white. But they know the difference. And the sheep know the shepherd. That still today, like shepherds can like call the sheep, and those sheep will come out of the rest of the flocks. It's crazy. It's crazy. The shepherd would know what each sheep needed. The shepherd would know which ones are tend to stray, like kind of like tend to like this meander. I think of my son William, who just like you leave him alone, he just kind of you don't know where he's gonna end up. Not because anything bad, he's just kind of exploring and forgetting where he is, and you know, he knows that you know the temperament of these sheep. You know what they need. Some shepherds might even have named their sheep as well, too. But this shepherd knows each name. That's how shepherds were. So when when the psalmist, when David is talking about a shepherd, he was a shepherd, by the way, he would eventually become a king, but he was a shepherd, so he knew this intimately. And then David makes this statement that seems almost too confident in this psalm. It almost seems too confident, too secure. In the version I read, it says, I have all that I need. Maybe growing up, we're like, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Anyone know that translation, right? Or I lack nothing. And this is easy to misread, right? Because we can easily read it off and go, Well, that's not my experience. Like, I can tell you a lot of times I didn't have what I needed. I can tell you a lot of times when I needed this and it didn't happen. Because we can list a lot of things that we didn't receive, or maybe we've received what we need, but we look around and go, there's others who haven't received what they need. What does this actually mean? It can feel like maybe that God is promising that nothing bad will ever happen, or that all of our prayers will be answered the way we hope they are in the time that we hope they are. But this isn't what the psalmist is saying. I wish he was, and I wish that were true. I wish that were experience. It's like, hey, you begin trusting, following Jesus, and you say, God, when I pray, you know, like then he answers it the way that I hope so, and uh, you know, and it just everything works out the way that we want it to. But what this is actually saying, it doesn't say I won't lack anything specific. It doesn't say I won't ever lack this or that. There's no list that David gives. It just says I won't lack full stop. Because the promise isn't about specific outcomes that we're hoping for. It's about the shepherd himself. Saying, What I most truly need is the shepherd. Because the shepherd is the one who looks out for me. The shepherd is the one who promises to never leave me, the shepherd is the one that I have security in, like in my identity and who I am, that I'm seen and I'm known and I'm loved. He has attention, he pays attention to us, nothing surprises him, and that's something he never withholds. But let's be honest. This morning, right now, you might be in a place where you're like, that doesn't feel like enough. That doesn't feel like enough. You're sitting here praying for something desperately. Maybe you're desperately praying for healing. Maybe in your body or someone you love, you're desperately praying for a relationship. Maybe you're single and you say, I don't, I don't want to be single. Maybe you're praying for healing in your relationship. Maybe it's a job or a situation that feels impossible. So when you hear someone like me say, God is what you need, it can feel like a non-answer. It can feel like, okay, thank you for that. God is all I need, but that's not what I asked for. I actually asked for a job. I actually asked for you to change the situation. Well, what I think David discovered, the psalmist, and what I'm still learning, is that the times when God feels often the most real and most present aren't the times when everything worked out. Or at least they don't seem to be working out. Oftentimes when God feels most real and most close is when everything was the hardest and God showed up anyway, in the moments that feel like this is not going the way I want it to go, is that we actually can often feel like God can be the closest. In verses two and three, the psalmist says, He lets me rest in green meadows, he leads me beside peaceful streams, he renews my strength, he guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name. So the psalmist says this, and and you know that anyone who had been hearing this psalm at first would have maybe had the questions we're asking, like, do I really lack nothing? Do I really have all that I need? But then he goes into verse two, and he starts by painting this beautiful picture of the shepherd leading him to rest in green meadows. Can you just imagine the kind of the rolling pastures and hills? Right? Maybe there's some flowers, some taller grass. Very idyllic. Resting in green meadows. There's a peaceful stream, a brook that's going through there, right? You can just kind of hear it bubbling. David says that his strength, his whole self is being renewed and restored. Have you ever had that kind of whether it's a vacation or a rest or like a nap that you took or whatever it is? And you just go, oh man, I needed that. Like just your whole self feels like restored. This is what he's saying. He's saying, This is what the shepherd does. And God, his shepherd, is leading the way from up front. He's keeping them safe and going towards where there's food and provision. Because when you don't know where to go, you know, the shepherd's out front of this whole flock leading the way, blazing the trail to a spacious place where they can graze. And why does it say the shepherd does this? Well, in the New Living Translation I read earlier, it says bringing honor to his name. The NIV means says for his name's sake. What does this mean? Well, we don't want to rush past it because it's actually really important. It's really important here to look at it because David's experience of God leading him and caring for him, he says this because David was convinced that God took care of him, was his shepherd, not because he had done all the right things or made all the right choices. It's actually clear that David is saying he doesn't know the right path to go. Because you wouldn't need a shepherd to lead you in the right paths if you already knew them. So it's not because he's so smart or so wise. He's admitting he needs God's help. So David's convinced that it wasn't because he was like the right kind of person or morally upright. We actually look at the life of David, and he had some real struggles, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But he's convinced it's because of who God is. Maybe you've had someone in your life like that. Maybe he was a parent, maybe he was a teacher, a coach, maybe he was a grandparent, where they were just like steady. Like, or maybe a spouse, they were just steady. Like, no matter what kind of you did and your reactions, your response, like they just were always there. They just loved you well. They just like cared for you, and you're just kind of like, man, this is kind of crazy. Like, why like I didn't show up my best at all? Like, actually, I wouldn't, I wouldn't blame you if you walked away. And yet you didn't. David's convinced. What this means is that that God does all this for his namesake. It means because of who God is. It's his character. It's his character. It's like, it's who God is. The people who loved you and were so faithful, they did love you. But there's also something about them that they were like, I just want to be a faithful person. I want to be a loving person. I want to love well. Like this is part of who they are. This is who God is. Which means that we can trust God as our shepherd. That we're not holding on by a thread. And if we make the wrong choice, if we mess up, if we hurt somebody, that God's all of a sudden I'm out. I told I was going to care for you. I told I was going to lead you in the right ways, but you didn't really follow me. So I'm going to kind of be, I'm done. It's because of who God is that David is convinced that God is his shepherd. But then verse 4 comes. Verse 4 comes and it says this even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid. You see the the juxtaposition here? It's like I'm like there's babbling brook and green pasture, and it's like something from the sound of music, all the rolling hills, you know, they're alive. The sound of music. And yet all of a sudden now it transitions. And I walk through the darkest valley, the valley that feels like death. It's a shift. It's a shift. I will not be afraid, even when that happens. He doesn't say if, right? I wish it was if. Like maybe I could avoid the dark valley. He says, if. He didn't say if. He says, even when I do, I'll not be afraid. For you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. And do you notice? And I've never noticed this until this week looking at the psalm. But if you look, suddenly David stops using the language of he leads me. Like, like the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He leads me, like he does. And then all of a sudden he says, he changes the language and he says, For you are close beside me. He stops talking about God and starts talking to him. He starts talking to him. I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. All of a sudden it becomes personal. It becomes personal. And when does it become personal for him? When the valley comes, right? The dark valley. The valleys where you feel like that loneliness, desire for friendship or relationship, the valley of being out of work, of having a sick spouse, of having expenses come up that you don't know how you're going to pay. The valleys that feel like death. It's in these spaces where God stops being just an idea. And he becomes a person. It's in the dark places and the challenging places where all of a sudden the pressure comes on, and it's like, God, you have to be more than an idea. If you're not more than an idea, then this isn't really helping me. If you just stay an idea, but all of a sudden David's saying, No, this is through the challenging parts. God, you have to be more than an idea. You have to be more than a philosophy, more than a religion, more than a way of life. I need you. I need you, God. In the green pastures and quiet waters, it's easier to have God as an encouraging idea, right? Things are going great. You get the promotion at work, you start the relationship, and you're like, man, God, you're so good. High five, this is great. You know, you because you're not really, we're not always like depending on God sometimes when things are going well. We can. We can live in a posture of always being dependent upon God, even in really great times and seasons, right? We definitely can live that way. I mean, that's what we're called to. But oftentimes we don't. And it's easy, kind of like to there not to be any pressure on it. And it's like easy to kind of go, of course you're good, God. I see it all around me. I'm so grateful. We're going to sing a song later. All my life you've been faithful. It's like, yes, I'm seeing it right now. But all of a sudden, it's in the spaces where it feels challenging. It feels like it's darkness. That it doesn't cut it that God's an idea. It doesn't cut it, the stories we remember learning maybe as a kid or early age. It doesn't cut it just remembering the past. But all of a sudden, we need God to be with us now. We need the experience of Him being with us now. We need a shepherd, someone that we know is actually holding things together, who's holding us together that we can rely on. We actually need a God who isn't caught off guard by our challenges or difficulties. That's why David says, you're close beside me or you're with me. And that's different, right? Because it says, in the beginning, it says he's leading us, but all of a sudden it says, you are with me. And so, you know, you can't really, when you're with me, it's like you're beside me, you're right here. So God goes from like the shepherd goes from leading out front, saying, Here we go, let's go. You can do that when things are really good. Because you don't really have to worry about the dangers, right? Like when it's a safe space, if you have kids or you've babysat before or grandkids, you can give them a little more space, right? If you're in an open field, right? You can like let them run. Like we live by Madison Park, and it's great because there's a huge soccer field. And so we can just let them run, even William. And you can just like go wherever because I'm currently still fast. Than him. And so I can chase him down because there's so much leeway. Right? But like in dangerous spaces, you don't give that much space. Right? Like, because that's not safe. That's not wise. You walk alongside of them. You hold their hand. And this is what shepherds would do with sheep is when they're in dangerous places, you stay closer. You don't lead from the front going, let's go. But you're like, all right, guys, let's go. It says, Your rod and your staff comfort me. Those are like a protecting stick and also a stick that pulls them back. It's not infinitely long. You have to be close enough where the shepherd can actually touch the sheep. David's saying, This is my experience walking through difficulty in valleys, is that God wants to be this close. He's this close to me. You are with me. And what that means for David, and this will mean for you and for me, is it means that God knows the specific valley that you might be in right now. Not just generally, like, ah, things are tough. But the specific valley that you are in, that I'm in. It's not just you, me too. He knows the valley that I'm in at times. It's specific. And he says, I'm right with you. I'm right with you. You're not forgotten. It feels like maybe you're forgotten. It feels like we're forgotten sometimes because we don't know how things are going to turn out. We don't know how this is going to work out. We don't know what God might do. We don't know what's going to happen. Maybe you're not, maybe you're just like go with the flow all the time. I like to know what's going to happen all the time. And when I don't, that's the hardest place for me to be. Is when I when there's uncertainty. But David knew the places of dark valleys. He did. When David was a shepherd, he was attacked by wild animals. He fought a giant. When he was young and he was just trying to serve the king, his king tried to kill him. Eventually, later in life, his son would try to kill him and overthrow him as king. None of us, I don't think any of us have had that happen yet. David, but also had valleys of his own making. He has an affair and then kills the husband of that woman. He creates his own valleys. And I know there are times that we create our own valleys. David knows that there are valleys that happen to us, and there are valleys that we walk right into. But David still says, you are with me. That doesn't mean that God says everything's okay, that we made all the right choices, no big deal. Whatever you do is fine. But God's promise that you are with me right here and right now. And I don't always know how to describe this. Like to talk about what does that mean? What's that experience of God being with you? But I know for me, I can just speak personally, because I was wrestling through this and go, what is that experience? How do you talk about that experience of God being with you in the midst of challenging circumstances that don't feel like they're changing? And it's thought about for me, there's something that's like grounding in the midst of pain and uncertainty. Where it actually brings like peace, but not peace that like everything's gonna work out. But there's this like grounding in the midst of uncertainty that I don't know how it's gonna turn out, but I know that you're with me. Like for an example, when we started this church, um, and some of you helped us start that church from the beginning six years ago. Our first service was February 9th, 2020. If you remember what you were doing in February of 2020, it was probably like whatever you did in February 2019. But then in March of 2020, it looked very different than March of 2019. We started this church, uh, and then five weeks later, COVID came and shut everything down. And we had no, we already didn't know what we were doing beforehand. I didn't know, everyone else did. Uh, but then you really don't know what anybody's doing because none of us had been through a pandemic before. You know, I don't know if I'd ever worn a mask before. And honestly, we didn't know if the church would make it through this or not. I don't know. I didn't know. Like starting a new church is a lot like starting a business at times. You there's lots of great ideas and you have excitement for things, but things unexpected happen, and then I don't know, like what will happen? And as we prayed and as I prayed, it wasn't that God gave a promise that said, hey, you guys are gonna make it. Out of 2020, you're gonna make it. But the promise was that God was with us through it all. That God was with us. So as we had to make choices about how do we meet? Do we meet outside or do we meet here? Do we wear masks? Do we not wear masks? Do we meet in person? Do we not meet in person? All these things we wrestled with. The promise was that God said, I'm with you. So whether or not this church lasts a year or ten years or a hundred years, I'm not gonna leave you. Because my closeness to you isn't dependent upon whether the church makes it. Whether or not you make all the right choices, whether you make all the right decisions. And it would have been nice to know, like, all right, this is what's gonna happen, and still I would love to know what our church is gonna look like in five years and in ten years. But the promise was the same promise that David experienced. That even when you walk through dark valleys of uncertainty, I'm with you. He was with us in 2020, and 21 and 22, and 23, 24, 25, 26. And he's with you. If you let him. If you let him, if you invite him in, if you say, God, I want relationship with you. You know, we read about Jesus standing at the door of our hearts and knocking and saying, if you let me in, I want to be with you.

unknown 28:17

Right?

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Like that's for everybody. When we say Jesus, like come in, then all of a sudden, like we've said yes to the invitation of God being our shepherd, of Jesus being our shepherd and walking with us. And again, when we walk through dark valleys, God comes alongside of us, not ahead of us, but right beside us. You are with me. And then the psalm makes this shift that we're probably used to by now, because again, we've heard it a lot of times. But it it really is unexpected. In verse five, he's talking about like sheep and shepherding in valleys, and then all of a sudden he says, You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. Like, whoa, that's different. You honor my head, you honor me by anointing my head with oil. I don't know about you, but I don't know if I want any oil dumped in my head. But we'll talk about that, what that meant back then. And then my cup overflows with blessings. Suddenly we leave the valley, and there's this feast that God has set up for them. For him. The picture of a feast I have is a table, I think of like medieval times, you know, where like these big banquet halls and everything's lit by torches, and there's just like food overflowing. I don't know why. I think of clusters of grapes, you know, like roasted chicken, whatever. You I don't know what you imagine. That's what comes to my mind, like big feast, big long wooden table. But the more specific translation says, you prepare a table for me, which is to imply a feast, but I love that language of you prepare a table. And here's the surprise: God doesn't wait until the enemies or the darkness is gone to prepare this table, this feast. He doesn't wait till everything is calmed down, till everything's kind of figured out, until you look, you know, we all we've all been there, right? We go like, once I get past this date, then we're good. Once I get past that project being done, once I get past that sickness, once whatever, then we'll be good. And God's saying, I want to prepare a table for you in the presence of all the challenges, in the presence of enemies, when things are unresolved, when we haven't got the job yet, where we're still struggling with sickness, when we still are wrestling with whatever our valley is. God says, I want to set a table for you. And here's what I think this table represents it's God saying that your identity is secure. Who you are, your value and your worth as a person is secure. It's secure. Like that your identity as someone who is loved is secure. That your worth, no matter what anyone else says, or no matter what your circumstances say, right? Sometimes we can like, uh depending on how connected we are to our job and profession, we can put so much of our identity of like and worth into your ability to succeed or achieve or make money. And when that falls in a way, you go, Who am I anymore? Or maybe in a marriage that doesn't, that's not around anymore, and you go, I don't even know who I am, or your kids have left home, you know, that they're grown up and go, I don't even know my identity anymore, or whatever it might be. And you say, No, no, no, your identity is secure. You are loved, you're his. He's saying, There's a seat for you with me. I know we've all wrestled at some time with loneliness or belonging, right? Like who's thinking about me? Like who who thinks about me? And God's saying, I do. There's a seat at this table for you with me. Not because everything worked out, not because you handled it all well. In this word anoint, it says, you know, you anoint my head, you honor me by anointing my head with oil. What does that mean? It means that it was an honored guest. You're an honored guest. Have you ever been, like whether it's like a party thrown for you, maybe, or you've come somewhere for the first time, and you just like feel celebrated, you feel seen. Like when you walk in the room, people are like genuinely excited that you're there. You experience that. I hope you have. I hope maybe if the first time you came here, maybe you experienced that. People being genuinely excited to anoint my head with oil to say you're an honored guest. God is saying, I have a table for you where you're an honored guest. That's so crazy, right? Because like we think about God. If you think about God and go, okay, maybe there's a God, maybe He created everything, He's got all this power, right? So like we sing songs to Him. So surely God would be like the honored guest. And yet here, David is saying, My experience of you, God, is that in challenging times when there's enemies all around me, somehow I feel honored by you. Somehow I feel like I belong with you, that I'm not alone. And we talked about this before, but you know, we talk about how suffering, what makes suffering and pain so hard, oftentimes is the isolation, it's a loneliness, or our sense of identity or worth or belonging or belovedness is on the line when we suffer. And when we don't suffer in isolation, but we suffer alongside of those who care for us and love us. It helps us walk through the suffering in a different way. So where we began this morning is the question of who's gonna keep the plates spinning if I don't? What if the balls drop? What if what if I can't keep up? What if no one else really is looking out for me? At the table that God invites us to is the answer to this fear. Because he says, you can sit down. You can sit down. Anybody struggle to sit down when you're having people over? Some of you, I know. That's right, right? Like you're just like hurrying. And you're actually like, I feel better not sitting down, right? And if you're like a parent, you know as soon as you sit down, that's when you're gonna be asked to grab something else. Uh but you just struggle to sit down and relax. What if there's this reality of like that God is so loves you and cares streams with you that you can actually sit down? Things may not all turn out the way that you hope or that I hope, but that you're not alone in it. That you can actually sit down. God says, Let me take care of you, let me walk with you in the middle of this. And this next verse I think is so important because it holds all this together. In verse six, it says this Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever. This word pursue, you can keep that up. This word pursue, the whole time we're talking about God leading us, right? Shepherding us. And we use this language oftentimes of like, I'm seeking after God. I'm like kind of like searching after what do I believe, right? And that's good. We should seek and search and all of that. But here it's that God is actually pursuing us, not chasing us down to go, hey, by the way, I don't think you know, you screwed up. Hey, by the way, I don't know if you remember, but you actually really hurt that person. Though God will remind us of ways that we hurt people. But this is saying right here that God pursues us and chases us with his goodness. Is that the image of God in your mind? Maybe take a moment. Like, is that how you see God? Like that God, what he wants to chase you down with is his goodness. He wants to chase you down with his love. Usually we're chaste, it's usually not a good thing. I mean, at the best, it's tagged, but then you get tagged and you're it, and then it's no bueno there. So but you're being chased down with goodness. This word unfailing love, it's a really important word in the in the Bible. It means um, it means like covenant promise love. The closest thing we have is the covenant promise that you make in marriage. That's the closest thing we have to it, is where you say, like, and you if you've ran around, you know the uh the covenant promises, you're like, you know, in better or worse, sickness and you know, sickness and health, all those things, till death that we part. Right? I know we struggle as humans to hold those. This is the closest thing to God's promise to us. Is saying, even if you're sick, even if it gets bad, even if it gets terrible, even it gets really hard. My promise is here. My promise is to be with you. This is what it's saying. That kind of love is chasing after you. Can you believe that? It's kind of wild. That kind of love is chasing after you. And so, in other words, we need to let ourselves get caught. We need to let ourselves get caught by that love. Because, man, we do a lot of things intentionally, unintentionally to run away from that love. And sometimes it's kind of that busyness of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, God, thank you for loving me. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there's a God, I'm sure I trust him, I pray, I go to church sometimes, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But we just got to stop for a moment and let his like love catch up to us. Let his love catch up to us. Because we are all running after something. We're all trying to prove something in our life, trying to earn something, gain something by all of our activity or inactivity or struggles or extra, whatever it is. We're trying to prove something. And God's just saying, Would you let my love catch up to you? You were not meant to try to prove yourself by your work. You are not meant to try to prove yourself by your family. You are not meant to prove yourself by your relationships or your skill or your health or how good you look, whatever it is. You aren't meant to prove yourself. Or like you were meant to just know that you're loved and let my love catch up to you. So, what does that look like in our lives? This idea of God being our shepherd and walking with us. Well, let me give you kind of three ways of thinking about it. Sometimes God is our shepherd, sometimes God changes circumstances. Sometimes God changes circumstances. Sometimes Him is our shepherd walking with us and leading us. Our circumstances change. Like here as a church, we believe that God answers prayer in even ways like that he wants us to ask, and that sometimes we don't have the things we need because we don't ask. And so we believe that God does change circumstances, that bodies are healed, that we do get the job, that financial provision does come through in ways we didn't expect. Sometimes things happen that we would call miraculous and go, I don't have any other way to explain it other than God. The job offer comes in, the door opens. There are those times where we see it, we pray for it, and God changes the circumstances. There's other times where God redeems the circumstances, redeems the circumstances. So, in other words, the circumstances don't change, but somehow He weaves the pain and the challenge into something that maybe it helps another person. Maybe we walked through something really difficult, and it took longer than we'd imagine. It didn't happen the way we wanted it to. And yet we we see how someone else in our life struggled the same way a year or two down the road, and we were able to say, Hey, I've been there. I've walked through that. And here's what I found, here's what I learned. The circumstances don't always change, but God can use the valleys to form us as people, to be more humble, to be more kind, more patient, more empathetic, right? Have you ever had this experience in your life where you've heard people struggle in a certain way, or you sympathize, but you didn't really get it, and then you had it happen to you. And you go, oh my gosh, this is what they were talking about. This is what they went through. God can use the valley to make us into someone else that helps others through the valley. And it's in the waiting that we're shaped and transformed. And sometimes, sometimes it's something we can only see when we look back. You know, they say hindsight is 20-20, right? That in the moment or maybe in the year or years to come, we can't see the tapestry that God is weaving with these painful experiences, with this suffering, that his goodness was still there in all of it, even the parts that maybe still hurt. And that doesn't mean that the things that happened to us or the people we love were good. That's not what I'm saying. Or that God even wanted them to happen. It means that sometimes we can only see the way that God was working through it all when we are further down the road and look back. And it doesn't always feel good in the moment, right? Like I had someone recently say something to me in a challenging circumstance, like, it probably won't make you feel better, but you know, I bet a couple years down the road you're gonna look back and go, like, man, that really transformed me. I was really able to help some other people. I'm like, yeah, I don't know how much that helps, but I hope it happens. And I will. Right in the middle of it, we're just like, I don't want to help somebody else. I just want it to change, right? Like, I don't want to, I don't, you know, in our moments. You've never been there, but I've been there. Uh, right, because you guys are just willing to help me to suffer, God, so I can help other people. I know that's the prayers you wake up to and pray each morning. But you know what? Here's the thing is you talk to people who have said, I want to, I want to follow Jesus, is that actually is the they begin to can wake up and go, God, in the midst of this, I want the suffering to be gone. But if it doesn't, would you help me to know how to suffer well and help me to love others in the midst of it and help other people in the midst when they're going through it? But this is why the psalmist says, all the days of his life. He's saying, All the days of his life in the past, present, and future, that God is and will continue to pursue us with his goodness and love. And we're gonna um at the end here, uh, and I'm gonna invite the band up, we're gonna sing uh goodness of God, because it talks about your goodness is running after me. And there's a psalm in the bridge that's from Psalm 23. It says, Your goodness is running after me. And again, this doesn't mean your goodness is running after me when everyone is ready or present or when you've got it all together, your life is together. Your goodness is running after me, like right now. Right now, as it is, as you are. And if you've sung this song, you've prayed this psalm. Because sometimes we'll sing this song. I don't know about you, your goodness is running after me. If you've been here before, know this song, and it can feel like it's like a declaration of like, yes, this is my life right now. And other times it can feel like this is what I'm saying is true, and then other times you're like, I don't know if I can sing this right now. Because it doesn't feel like this. Can I just tell you by the way, God's not mad if you're having a tough time when we sing these songs sometimes, and it's good to like stand up in faith and go, this is true, but when you're in the midst of suffering and pain, to go, this is hard to sing right now. Can I just encourage you? You don't have to sing it. Maybe pay attention to those around you that are singing it, because that could just be a reminder, actually. That's why we have community. So you can say, This is really painful, this is really hard. And I don't know, and it's hard for me to say these words, you know. But I can hear Terry, I can hear Sean, I can hear Costa sing these songs and be encouraged. Because they're remembering for me that God, your goodness, is coming after me. You don't have to hold it all together. You never did, nor did I. But there's a shadow. That promises to be with us, that he's not distant or distracted or caught off guard by what you're carrying. He knows you by name, he knows your temperament, he knows what you need. In his goodness and unfailing love, don't quit. Even in the valley. And it's not conditional. It's not conditional. It's not conditional. It's not something God said, if you if you do this, if you do it all right, then I'll be with you. The Lord is your shepherd, which means you don't have to be your own shepherd.

SPEAKER_01 44:39

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